Category Archives: Thoughts

Gone makin’

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I’m writing this with a conflicted heart, but I’m here today to let you know that I’m putting the blog on hiatus. Short-term? Long-term? I honestly don’t know. I just know I’ve been writing this blog for 8+ years and I need a break — and a chance to focus on some other projects I can never quite get to. It’s a very hard decision to make because I value your company more than you know, but I’m not going away. I’ll still be knitting and sewing, obviously, and will strive to be better about sharing my makes on Ravelry and on my @karentempler feed on Instagram. I’m also aiming to do more with the @fringesupplyco feed, and I’m thinking of adding links and such to the shop newsletter, so make sure you’re following and subscribed accordingly. (There’s a newsletter signup field in the page footer here). I’m hoping this will lead to MORE creative output from me, and I still want to share it with you — just in different ways, for now.

Of course, Fringe Supply Co. marches on! And there are years’ worth of content in the archives that might be new to you, so I encourage you to explore it:

– All of the free patterns and how-to’s, including the top-down Improv tutorial
– The trove of pattern recs and links and stuff that fall under Finds
– The Hot Tips that make knitting life simpler and less stressful
– The Beginning to Knit archive of posts for anyone starting out or wanting to advance their skills
– And a peek behind the scenes with so many talented makers in Our Tools, Ourselves

Among many other things!

I’m so grateful to you for being here so far, and for all you’ve shared with me and taught me, and I hope you’ve found my work here useful in exchange. There’s definitely a next chapter, and I’m eager for the chance to figure out what shape it takes! So stay tuned, and thank you.

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Pre-Fall Wardrobe Planning: Linen meets wool (eventually)

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Pre-Fall Wardrobe Planning: Linen meets wool (eventually)

Do you abide by any of those old “rules” like “no white after Labor Day”? I’m so indifferent to them I don’t think I’d ever even heard the prohibition against linen after Labor Day until I moved to Nashville. But my feeling is as long as the weather insists on hovering around the 100-degree mark, I insist on clinging to my linen wardrobe. Especially since I’ve been busily building it up these past several weeks! And the minute I get the brief opportunity to don the magical pairing of linen and wool, I will unapologetically do so.

We’re nowhere near that point yet, but I am distracting myself from the heat with fantasies of how I can put things together that look a tiny bit more like Fall (while still wearing like Summer) as well as what those first just-barely-sweater-weather pairings might look like. (See also, THIS.)

Pre-Fall Wardrobe Planning: Linen meets wool (eventually)

Recent makes pictured include my black linen tunic and my ivory smock vest, plus linen pants in toffee, stripe and pomelo. The third and fourth tops pictured are both by my longtime Internet friend Jo Abellera of Kkibo, both stunning, which I was extremely luck to get for my birthday at the end of last year when I visited her workspace in CA.

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PREVIOUSLY in Wardrobe Planning: Latter 2019 mood/palette

Q for You: What’s your time-worthy detail?

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Q for You: What's your knitting time-worthy detail?

In this instant-gratification world of ours, being a knitter at all is an act of rebellion, in a sense — knitting something, stitch by stitch, that others would buy, discard and replace in the same amount of time. And yet even though we’re committed to spending that time, we often still want things to be as quick as possible, right? There are the steps and details we’ll happily avoid or skip altogether, where possible — from choosing seamless designs to leaving ends dangling inside a finished object. But there are also the little details we each feel are worth that extra bit of time they take to elevate our FOs. Things that might be technically unnecessary (like adding seams to a seamless garment) or could be done in some briefer fashion (e.g., a plain neckband versus a folded one), and things that simply look too good not to do.

For me, a no-brainer is the little bit of extra time it takes to do a tubular bind-off on top-down cuffs. (This is my Grace pullover in progress.) The difference in how much better it looks than a standard BO is worth it all by itself, but the additional stretchiness of that edge is just so much more pleasant to wear, and I’m aware of it with every push and pull of the cuff for the life of the sweater. (I like Purl Soho’s tutorial, if you’ve never done it.)

So that’s my Q for You today: What’s the little knitting detail you consider more than worthy of the time it takes?

I look forward to your responses, and wish you a happy weekend!

IN SHOP NEWS: We’ve got the butterscotch Porter Bin back in stock at the moment! While they last …

(Stitch marker, yarn, Lykke interchangeable needles and DPNs, and tapestry needle all from Fringe Supply Co. lol)

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PREVIOUSLY in Q for You: What’s your progress blocker

Standing with Ravelry

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As someone who ran a large forum website for 9 years, I have an uncommon understanding of just how different that is from any other kind of job or business. A site like that is an organism, and I know what it is to try to set boundaries around it. So not only do I applaud Jess and Casey at Ravelry for taking a stand on what they are and aren’t willing to host, or be the conduit for, with their privately owned site and business, I hope it will embolden the owners of other social platforms to take a stronger stand on what they are willing to let people distribute through their sites.

White supremacy is on the rise in this country and elsewhere, indisputably, and it’s been emboldened and encouraged by the current occupant of the White House. It didn’t start with him and it won’t end when he leaves, but it’s out in the open now and there’s been nothing more important in my lifetime than to stand against it. So yeah, damn right I stand with Ravelry on this. 

(NOTE: This text originally appeared in my Instagram Story on June 24, 2019.)

Mini New England knitting adventure

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Mini New England knitting adventure

I’m just back from a little unplanned adventure! As you may recall, I made the decision a couple of months ago to decline the Maker in Residence position at Squam Art Workshops and ask that it be offered to a maker of color instead — and was happy when Jewell of Our Maker Life accepted it. With Bob’s surgical near-future still in flux, I also had to back us out of vending at the Squam Art Fair. Which left me with no official role at Squam but still with a plane ticket to Boston and a significant need for the time off, not having taken any in six months. And while giving up the residency had been an easy decision to make, I regretted not getting to see Rosa Pomar while she was here (there) to teach — among other loved ones — and wanted to meet Jewell in person. So I decided to keep my flights.

Each time I’ve been to Squam — near Holderness NH — I’ve wished I had the time to wander into Maine, having never been there. It’s right there, but I never get to do it. So when my friend Mary Jane Mucklestone suggested I drive to Portland and crash on her couch, it sounded like the perfect chance. We looked at lighthouses, walked all over the place, ate lobster rolls, and of course, knitted. And then we drove over to Squam for the weekend. There are rooms in a big creaky old lodge building that are set aside for Taste of Squam (weekend-only attendees), and we shared one of them; spent time knitting on the dock and the porch and in front of the fire, and shopped the Art Fair before parting ways and heading home on Sunday.

It was great to see so many people, however briefly, and to say a quick hello-goodbye to those beloved woods — the sad part being that Jewell was unable to make it after all! Unforeseen circumstances forced her to cancel at the last minute. So I hope we’ll have another chance to meet sometime.

. . .

But what about the knitting! The night before I left, I knitted and blocked a swatch for the Grace sweater I’ve included in my Summer of Basics trio, which I’m not knitting at pattern gauge. While the plane filled in on Wednesday, I measured the swatch (3.75 sts/inch as compared to 2.75 in the pattern), did my math, and cast on in-flight. By the time I got home Sunday night, I was already about 3″ past the divide for the body and sleeves! I know it’s not about speed, but there’s no denying how satisfying it is to knit a sweater that moves that quickly. Imagine if I were actually knitting at the original superbulky gauge — I’d likely have only a sleeve to go. And that’s not even the only thing I knitted. I also finished the shawl collar on my smock vest and wove in the ends. Can’t wait to show it to you!

All in all, five days well spent.

(Yarn and Town Bag from Fringe Supply Co.)

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Me Made May: What the data shows

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Me Made May bullet journal habit tracker spread

In case anyone ever wondered whether I’m more into selfies or data, it’s absolutely no contest. I only took one proper #ootd photo for the month, and despite my dread of selfies I had probably about a 60% success rate of snapping a quick mirror pic in the morning, as backup. But I was 100% successful at keeping up the tracker I set up in my mini bullet journal for the month, and it was really interesting to me to see how it developed. In case it’s interesting to you, here are the results:

— I wore something me-made on 21 of the 31 days.

— The percentages of me-made for each day’s outfit averaged out to 46%. Data-fan Julia rightly commented on my earlier post that there’s a logical flaw in this column, as 1 me-made in a 2-part outfit would be valued at 50% while 1 me-made in a 3-part outfit would only be valued at 33%. I was curious to calculate it anyway. And I also gave myself small percentages of credit for garments that were modified by me in some way, such as 5% for the pockets added to a pair of RTW pants. So the me-modifieds factor into this particular calculation.

Me Made May bullet journal habit tracker - #ootd outfits list

— There were a total of 69 garment instances in the daily outfit listing, not counting shoes, and they broke down as 31 Me-Made, 13 Hybrid, 25 Ready-to-Wear. This is a more accurate tally of what percentage is me-made, and that’s 45% MM / 20% H / 35% RTW. Pretty sure it’s a statistical coincidence that these two ways of calculating the MM percentage came in at 46% and 45%. But regardless, it’s mighty close to my original estimate of 50%.

Me Made May bullet journal habit tracker wear counts

— I wore a total of 27 unique garments during the month, 9 of which were me-made (mostly pants) and 4 of which I had some hand in: the army shirtjacket refashion, the State Smock I dyed, a tee I screenprinted and the black linen pants I added pockets to. That’s 13. The other 14 were purchased — so again, just under 50%. (Note that on weekend days where I only wore exercise clothes or all-day pajamas, I did list the pajamas in the outfit rundown, in parentheses, and indicated which were me-made, but I did not include any purely pj garments in the wear count.)

— Most worn garments were my jeans (which gave way by mid-month), my ivory canvas wide-leg pants (2018) and my black muscle tee (2016) — the latter two being my hardest working me-mades, so … no surprises there.

But what was really interesting was being conscious as I was getting dressed of what parts of my spring-into-summer clothes are homemade and … not. If I were to do this in winter, I’d have on a handknit sweater pretty much every day, so it’d be a question of whether the bottom half was also me-made or RTW. I still have a pronounced dearth of tops for this time of year, and what I do have is largely RTW, so if I wasn’t wearing me-made pants, I was likely not wearing any me-made at all. That tops issue is one I’m really working to address, and this strengthened my resolve to focus my sewing energy on that particular gap in my closet.

Me Made May bullet journal habit tracker

As always, I loved designing and maintaining this tracker, and I learned enough doing this little exercise that I think I will do it again in different seasons to see how the results compare!

(Notebook from Fringe Supply Co.)

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PREVIOUSLY in Me Made Bay: The bujo way

Q for You: What’s your progress blocker?

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Q for You: What's your knitting progress blocker?

I’m pretty sure “stuck on sleeve island” is the most frequent lament among knitters (which you know I don’t understand!) but I suspect we have a wide array of idiosyncratic responses as far as what part of the knitting process stalls our progress or even robs us of mojo, in some cases. No doubt for a lot of knitters it’s seaming, and thus the need to seam is avoided altogether. That’s another one I don’t get — seaming is like performing a little magic trick, although it does tend to put a halt to progress in that I only do it during daylight hours. So unless I happen to finish something on a Thursday night, have it blocked and dried by Saturday morning, and have a corresponding chunk of free time that very weekend, there will almost always be a lull while something awaits seaming. But the real mojo thief for me is picking up stitches.

Picking up stitches is the other thing I only do in daylight, so there’s that, but I don’t actually dislike it. In fact, the neat-freak part of me takes pleasure in that nice tidy column of stitches running up along the needle, in marking off matching sections and making sure I’m picking up identical numbers of stitches for perfect symmetry. I honestly have no idea why I dread doing it, and yet it is almost always the source of a disruption in forward progress. This poor vest spent three weeks waiting for me to have the right spot of daylight to seam it, after which I forged right into picking up armhole stitches in hopes of avoiding a cessation, but I picked up too few in my haste, and now I wonder how long it will be before I pick it up again. And I really want this vest!

So that’s my primary progress blocker and my Q for You: What is yours?

(Needles, removable stitch markers and notebook from Fringe Supply Co.)

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PREVIOUSLY in Q for You: What’s your favorite pattern source?